Election Conflict Got You Down? A Few Thoughts on Why We Do This Every Four Years)Rebecca Adams)10/17/2016<p>
Have you had a conversation this election cycle with a person you
think is sensible and thehttp://www.argosy.edu/our-community/blog/election-conflict-got-you-down-a-few-thoughts-on-why-we-do-this-every-four-years

Election Conflict Got You Down? A Few Thoughts on Why We Do This Every Four Years

Have you had a conversation this election cycle with a person you
think is sensible and then you learn who they’re voting for?

“How can any person actually vote for X?” we mutter and our respect
for that other person may actually slip a notch. Replace X with the name
of your least
favored candidate.

It wasn’t always this way.

I remember as a boy how my parents would keep secret who they were
going to vote for president, even from each other. Imagine that! They
would playfully
suggest that their votes would likely cancel each other out yet
again. “Why do we even bother?” they’d joke. And then they’d put on
their coats and go out
and cast their ballot.

As a psychologist, all of this raises two questions for me. How did
it get this bad? And when many of us don’t care that much for either
candidate, why
should we even bother?

The first question is complicated of course. Our two political
instincts as a nation seem about equally divided. And we increasingly go
to news sources or
read Facebook posts that confirm what we were already thinking.
Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

But a social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt thinks our political leanings run deeper than that. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion,
Haidt argues that progressives and conservatives are driven by two
different sets of values. According to his research, progressives
tend to be most moved by arguments of fairness and compassion towards
others while
conservatives tend to resonate to arguments of love of country and
respect for authority. To that latter list, I might also add taking
personal
responsibility. It’s not that either group totally ignores any of
these values just that different ones seem to carry greater weight.

While we may disagree on which values should take precedence in
making the decisions our country faces, can we at least take a moment
and agree that all
five values are worthy of consideration?

Haidt tends to think that by adulthood our values are rather hard
wired inside of us. He suggests we rationalize arguments to support what
are for us core
emotional ways of viewing the world. Another psychologist, Joshua
Greene, argues in Moral Tribes that individual moral reasoning is more of a
factor than Haidt thinks. But both agree the gulf between the two “tribes” is growing wider.

Few of us enjoy such conflicts and there is an understandable
temptation to withdraw from the fray and simply not vote at all.
Obviously the stakes are
high this year, but I think there are also other important reasons
to vote.

Unless you are in the military, there are relatively few times we as
Americans take action that explicitly recognizes our responsibilities
as citizens of
this country. Filing our income taxes, however unpleasant that may
be, is another. The scarcity of such moments of communal national action
may be some of
the reason we all too often forget our commitment to and solidarity with
each other. Disasters draw us together, but that is something happening
to us. Watching fireworks on the Fourth of July is largely
for fun. Voting is our moment of taking charge of what will follow in
our collective
community.

When you go to vote this November, which I sincerely hope you do
regardless of your political affiliation, look around at whom else is
voting. Some are
neighbors, others are strangers, but they all share with you a
belief that some rights we ignore at our peril and some responsibilities
we happily choose
to embrace. They care what happens and so do you.

Enjoy that thought. Wear the sticker “I Voted” with pride, celebrating the fact that no one else knows how you voted, but only that you did. My
parents would approve.

Mark Carlson-Ghost, PhD

Associate Professor at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University